The Three Treasures Part II
JING
Jing
The first treasure is the body.
The body is the foundation. Without the body, no further work stabilizes.
The body is where the rest of the work begins.
PRINCIPLE
Form precedes formless.
The world of form is the training ground for the world of the formless. The practitioner who cannot tolerate correction at the gross, tangible level cannot tolerate it at the subtle level either.
This is why the body comes first. The physical body is the surface where reality writes its corrections. The practitioner who has not learned to read those corrections, or tolerate being corrected, at this level will not be able to read them or accept correction anywhere else.
The “strong” body is not the same as Jing.
The strong body may be one expression of Jing.
It may also be its absence.
EXAMPLE
A practitioner may build the body to the limit of what conventional training teaches.
He may become the strongest man in the village. He may earn medals. He may hold records. By every measure the village uses for strength, he may be at the top of the bell curve.
And in time his joints will begin to fail. He will need to nap in the afternoons. His mind will tire by midday. His creative work will narrow into short windows surrounded by long fatigue.
The conventional Jing work, taken to its limit, did not produce what Jing is supposed to produce.
This is not the practitioner’s failure.
The practitioner did the work the village taught.
The village could not see the cycle, therefore, the village did not have the whole training.
The training thats often missing presents itself in lack of mobility, stability and grace.
The practitioner who adds these to the village’s training begins to recover. The joints quiet. The naps disappear. Cognitive clarity returns and lasts longer each year.
The repair is not more of what failed.
The repair is what the village did not have.
For the energy to run efficiently through any physical body, it must run unimpeded.
· · ·
APPLICATION
Sleep. Strength. Nutrition. Posture. Movement. Discipline. These are the visible parts of Jing.
Beneath them: the older, primordial practices. The breath we take for granted. The energy work that has no short term, visible reward.
The serious practitioner studies both layers. The visible work is necessary, as it makes the body capable of carrying the older work. The older work makes the body capable of carrying the rest of the apparatus.
The body is the first thing the room reads.
Long before you speak.
And it is the first thing to cultivate and/or restore.
REFLECTION
Where is your Jing intact? Where is it failing?
Are you treating the failures as fitness problems, or as something the older training would address?
What part of the apparatus have you skipped because the village did not teach it?
Do this reflection before Part III and you will get more out of it.
Gray Wolf